Sticky soap

[nframe]

I have always used 5% castor oil in my soaps until I came across this thread:
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/tallow-soap.71968

In post no. 2 Irish Lass gave a recipe in which she used 23% castor oil. Incidentally, I tried this recipe and the resulting soap is wonderful. Thank you Irish Lass for this!

So, for some strange reason, I decided to try a new recipe yesterday with 10% castor oil. The rest is 20% coconut, 25% olive, 40% tallow and 5% rice bran oil. Today the soap is extremely sticky. I am sure it is due to the 10% castor oil. My question is: will the soap stop being sticky eventually? Should I rebatch it or should I mix it to a new recipe that has no castor oil?

It must be something to do with fatty acids and things like that but my chemistry knowledge is not good enough to understand what is happening... I just want the soap to stop being sticky!

 

[earlene]

I have read, and I am pretty sure it was Irish Lass who wrote about this, that the stickiness of each soap depends on the particular recipe. In some recipes a high Castor percentage works well without stickiness while in other recipes, it does not. I have little experience with using higher percentages of Castor, so can't tell you what the factors that would counteract the stickiness actually are.

Maybe someone else will come along and answer your question with more certainty.

 

[apples]

I often do 10% castor, no stickiness except during humid rainy days. I once had all soaps in the curing rack with a sticky layer I guess glycerin dew which I only noticed when I wanted to wrap the soaps. I had to keep a fan on for few days until the sticky layer eventually dried up/ gone and I quickly wrap them up.

 

[jcandleattic]

earlene is right. it's the recipe. Oils work in conjunction with each other and when you change the oils, or the % or oils, you change the outcome of the entire soap.

My recipe is high in CO low in OO and is not drying at all.
If I switch the % of those 2 oils (and only those 2 oils, but the rest of the recipe is the same) and use less CO and more OO, I get a drying soap.